'Leave your faith or leave your country'

â€œWe are not Muslim, we are not Hindu, but first and foremost, we are Sindhi. There is a conspiracy to force Sindhi Hindus to leave Sindh, but we will not allow nefarious elements to succeed,â€ a political activist was sloganeering in English outside the Hyderabad Press Club.

Like most nationalists, he was hoping his message would be heard not only everywhere in Pakistan but also all across the world.

But the sad reality is, all these protests are of no use; the messages all fruitless. Despite their community's strong resistance, the situation is very much the same as it was yesterday. Hindu girls were converted in the past, are being converted today, and Iâ€™m sure, will be converted down to the very last Hindu remaining on the soil of Sindh.

It is true that whenever a Hindu girl in Sindh is kidnapped or converted, a large number of Sindhi Hindus â€“ in the face of fear and hopelessness â€“ are forced to migrate to India.

Also read: Footprints: Hindus in no man's land

After the alleged kidnapping of Anjali Bai Meghwar from Daharki, Kajul Bheel from Matiari district and Karin from Nawabshah (most people not aware of these names), many people including my dear friend Ajeet Kumar are forced to consider the idea of migration.

â€œAs a last resort we have decided to migrate to India," Ajeet told me a few days ago.

"We are completely insecure here. We are looted but our voice is not heard by the people in the saddle, our temples are attacked in broad daylight but no one takes action, our girls are kidnapped and forcibly converted only to hear more empty promises of justice.

"Nothing happened in the last 65 years and we donâ€™t expect any improvement in future. Things will only become wore.â€

All the political parties have condemned and protested the forced conversion of 12 year-old Anjali and subsequent marriage to a young man. But while Bilawal Bhutto, the ruling partyâ€™s chairman, has taken cognizance of it, most PPP leaders have kept mum as they know there is no way to turn the situation around. Intolerance of faith differentials has gone so far in this country that not only Hindus but Christians, Ahmadis and Shias are equally targeted every now and then.

The situation is chilling.

Also read: 1,000 minority girls forced in marriage every year: report

In a place where Khursheed Shah was recently charged with religious contempt just because of his usage of the word â€œMuhajirâ€; where naming a road after Bhagat Singh, a true Pakistani, can cause so much trouble; where murderers, like Mumtaz Qadri, are welcomed with roses; people being forced to leave their faith and embrace the dominating one does not look odd at all.

â€œIn the coming few months we will leave our motherland," said Ajeet. "See, they have brought conditions to this point; they want us to give up the faith or leave the country."

What can one do in these circumstances? Every new incident of forced conversion increases the feeling of trepidation and insecurity, and the desperateness to flee this land. Even well-heeled families are migrating as they think there is no other option left.

Ramesh Kumar Vankwani, member of PML-N told National Assembly that over 5,000 Hindus are migrating from Sindh to India every year.

Hindus constitute five per cent of Sindh's population. Vankwani's figure suggests that 22.22 per cent of the total Hindu community of the province migrate to India every year.

How many years before Sindhi Hindus are completely expelled?

Everyone knows that the Sindh government passed a law last year which criminalised underage marriages.

But has the government taken any action against those who have converted Anjali? Or even just against those who forced an underage Anjali to marry someone?

Also read: Hindu council urges PM to prevent atrocities against minorities

Anjali Meghwarâ€™s father Kundan Lal has presented her NADRA and school documents in the court before the authorities. These documents certify her age as 12.

But much like the inertia of previous PPP governments, I think this incident will lead to zero action as well. I mean, PPP has not even managed to oust people like Mian Mithu (allegedly involved in Rinkle Kumari and Anjali Meghwar's cases) from its ranks.

Everyone and everything from the police, the courts and the elected assembly members can be controlled with astonishing ease, as it happened in the case of Rinkle Kumari â€“ a girl from the same district converted by the same people last year. A video was released showing assailants brandishing weapons inside the court. Back then, MPAs and MNAs from the district did not utter a single word in support of the victims. Nor have they done so now.

So when people like Ajeet give up all hopes of improvement, they are very much in the right; because when a state cannot even pass the Hindu Marriage Act, how can it protect them and their assets? How can it prevent their girls from being forcibly converted? It canâ€™t. This is the sorriest state for a state.

"It is indeed difficult to leave Sindh. It is our homeland, it has borne us. But we also canâ€™t stop subscribing to our faith. So leaving is the only option left."

WASHINGTON: An estimated one thousand Christian and Hindu women are forced to convert and marry Muslim men in Pakistan every year, says a report released on Monday.

According to a report by the Movement for Solidarity and Peace in Pakistan, up to 700 of these women are Christian and 300 are Hindu.

â€œThe true scale of the problem is likely to be much greater, as a number of cases are never reported or do not progress through the law-enforcement and legal systems,â€ the authors claim.

The MSP also issued an appeal for action along with this investigative report detailing forced marriages and conversions of Christian girls and women in Pakistan.

The Christian community in Pakistan is over two million in size, accounts for 42 per cent of Pakistan's minority population, and is mostly resident in Punjab.

MSPâ€™s investigations find that cases of forced marriages/conversions follow a distinctive pattern: Christian girls â€” usually between the ages of 12 and 25 â€” are abducted, converted to Islam, and married to the abductor or third party.

The victim's family usually files a First Information Report for abduction or rape with the local police station. The abductor, on behalf of the victim girl, files a counter FIR, accusing the Christian family of harassing the willfully converted and married girl, and for conspiring to convert the girl back to Christianity.

Upon production in the courts or before the magistrate, the victim girl is asked to testify whether she converted and married of her own free will or if she was abducted.

In most cases, the girl remains in custody of the abductor while judicial proceedings are carried out.

Upon the girl's pronouncement that she willfully converted and consented to the marriage, the case is settled without relief for the family. Once in the custody of the abductor, the victim girl may be subjected to sexual violence, rape, forced prostitution, human trafficking and sale, or other domestic abuse.

These patterns of violence and miscarriages of justice are explored in the report through an examination of 10 illustrative cases.

The report also describes the historical and social context of the problem, and the particular grievances of Pakistan's Christian community in relation to the existing legal, political, and procedural guarantees for the protection of human rights of Pakistan's religious minorities. The report also highlights the patterns of violence through which the law and social attitudes become complicit in providing immunity for perpetrators, and the complex nature of associated crimes that make it difficult to categorise this crime as specific to religious identity. The report concludes with detailed recommendations at various levels â€” national, provincial, and local â€” for key stakeholders.

MSP is mobilising an inclusive coalition to raise awareness on this issue. MSP will host outreach events in the coming weeks in Pakistan (in collaboration with the National Commission of Justice and Peace in Pakistan) and around the world.

KARACHI: Protesting over increasing attacks on minorities and forced conversions, the Pakistan Hindu Council on Sunday proposed the establishment of an active committee at the federal level under Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to prevent atrocities against minorities.

This was unanimously endorsed in an urgent meeting called by the executive body of the council, which also assigned Member National Assembly Dr. Ramesh Kumar Vankwani the task of contacting other representative parties for their support.

The meeting was chaired by Chela Ram Kewlani to review mounting atrocities against minorities across the country.

Condemning the brutal killing of a Christian couple in Punjab, the council deplored the kidnapping of Hindu citizens, particularly of minor girl Anjali from Dherki, Kiran from Nawab Shah and Jeoti from Hyderabad.

The council demanded the prime minister and provincial chief ministers implement effective and practical legislation to protect minorities, adding that interfaith harmony and Hindu marriage laws were needed.

Chela Ram said that oppressed minorities saw a ray of hope with the Supreme Court order to protect minoritiesâ€™ rights, but unfortunately state institutes due to a negligent approach have failed to implement the apex courtâ€™s order.

â€œMinorities are still as vulnerable as they were one-and-a half years ago and to add to their misery, the land mafia is actively engaged in illegally occupying religious places of minorities and the kidnapping of Hindu girls is still happening.

"Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah on 11 August 1947 clearly said in his speech that the first duty of the state is to provide welfare for its citizensâ€¦ minoritiesâ€™ rights should be protected without discrimination,â€ he added.

This is long-standing tribal method. There is nothing ingenious about it. This is how a tribe establishes dominance.

Actually marriage with girls from outside community was there in Vedic tradition also, however it was never forced.

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We live in a modern world with modern realities. Tribal instinct prevail even now as a subtext is only exhibited in primitive mindsets.

While it is correct that actions is based on the simple premise that the human mindâ€”and its behavioural outcomesâ€”have been shaped by biological evolution, just as human physiology has been shaped by evolution, and just as all other animal species have been shaped by evolution, yet the evolution of the psychology has been shaped by the environment as it matured.

In primitive areas, the tribal instinct may have traces still, made into some sort of custom and tradition to give it a faÃ§ade of social sanction, but to believe that Pakistan is a primitive society across its length and breadth would be stretching the mÃªme,plus Ã§a change, plus c'est la mÃªme chose a wee bit too much.